The Shadow of Stars
by Silence In Winter
Summary: A bitter reality waits at the end of Dream 13. After Aya's death, Kaito is presented with an encrypted flash drive that once belonged to her and a handful of pictures with a disturbing connection to his epic dreams. [KatioxAya]
1. Prologue

**A/N:** I love Lost in Harmony, but after I finished it I really wanted to explore what happened (particularly to Kaito) in the wake of Aya's death. There is just so much potential for him to mourn lol. I wrote this first draft awhile back but I've just gotten around to editing and posting.

 **DISCLAIMER: Lost in Harmony and all related content, characters, etc. belong to Digixart. I own nothing.**

* * *

 **The Shadow of Stars  
**

 _Prologue_

The things she left behind were only important because I made them. The things that mattered smelled too much like her to evoke anything but rain-colored memories that tasted of salt.

Truthfully, I didn't need the Onkyo headphones that were still sitting on her dresser. They were broken and had been so for the past two years. She'd told me not to wear them and try to grind a rail for the first time but like an idiot I didn't listen. I hit the concrete stairs hard enough to crack the internal drivers and, for that matter, my face. At the time, it was pretty upsetting considering the headphones were a birthday gift from her.

Although when I stop to think about it, she didn't laugh when I fell or neg with her foresight. She was right beside me, pulling to me to my feet and wiping the blood off my lip with her pale wrist as she screamed my name. _Kaito, Kaito, Kaito..._ _Can you hear me_ _..._

I closed my eyes, letting that memory sit in my on my brain as I gouged my eyes with the heels of my hands. No one would ever say my name like she did.

I took the headphones and stuffed them into my backpack. Absently, I reached for the Totoro plush she had sitting on her dresser but my fingers felt stiff, caught by the invisible threads of memory that lead back to the anime marathons we had on long weekends. When she was too tired to keep her eyes open she would curl herself around a throw pillow and sleep. I would count her breaths as she slept, notice how many inches her small hands were from mine. As time passed her breathing became sharp and quick, like she was inhaling glass. I started choosing road movies that would make her laugh so she wouldn't fall asleep.

I took a deep breath, gathering the courage to turn around and face the entirety of her empty room. Sans Aya, it should have felt lonely and bitter. But it didn't. Aya had rudely left very real pieces of herself all over the room and it made my heart bleed something ugly.

Her favorite hoodie was empty, draped over her vanity chair as though she was coming back to hang it up. Scattered across her butterfly duvet was sketch paper, pencils, and eraser shavings. On her bedside table, half-full orange prescription bottles were clustered next to a glass of stale water and her reading glasses. I walked to the bed and sat at the head. The slight smell of jasmine lingered, making my skin prickle as sepia memories blossomed.

I reached out and picked up the nearest picture. It was a simple drawing of two hands holding a brilliant star. The detailing was incredibilly thorough, but even I could tell she hadn't finished it. The shading was incomplete, making some parts appear to pop out of the page while others were flat and one dimensional. Additionally, unlike many of the other pictures Aya had scattered across the bed, this one was bland and colorless.

Nonetheless, I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. Jasmine. It still smelled of jasmine.

"Kaito?"

I dropped the paper and jumped off the bed, hoping my hands didn't look as red as my cheeks.

"Y-Yeah?" I looked up to see Miyoko, Aya's mother, standing in the doorway. Her hair was the same passionate red her daughter's had been. Today, it looked unwashed and disheveled, half-heartedly swept up into a lopsided bun. Underneath her eyes she had dark half-moons but she still smiled at me. "How's it coming? Are you finding your things okay?"

I swallowed and it felt like glass. My eyes suddenly felt hot and wet. "Yeah," I said. "I don't have much. It's just weird, you know, seeing everything without her here."

Miyoko was silent for a moment, breathing in the silent atmosphere of Aya's room. "I know." She said finally. "It still feels like she's here, doesn't it?"

Her words were incredibly generic, but the depth of her tone made me realize that I wasn't the only one who walked through my day with Aya's absence burning a hole in my heart. I would mourn my inability to share a new ollie trick I learned at the skate park while Miyoko would pretend she still had to buy her daughter a birthday gift two months from now.

"Well," Miyoko broke the silence again. "I found this in Aya's things she had the hospital." She held out a small flash drive capped with the cute chibi head of a bear.

"Oh, that was Aya's." I said as casually as I could. She had used it many times during school projects.

"I know." Miyoko said. "But it has something on it and I can't get in. I know you two were close, so I thought that maybe whatever is on that flash drive might belong to you."

I took the drive from her, staring at the cold plastic face of the bear in my palm. "Thanks," I said, turning it over, not quite sure why I was accepting the bear.

Miyoko nodded. "Take your time." Then she was gone, leaving me alone with the the drive and Aya's mess of art work.

Her art. I had been looking at her art. I tucked the flash drive into my pocket and returned to the pictures. Just at a glance she had done quite a few. Most of them were filled in with watercolor but the one that captured my attention was a rather familiar portrait of the two of us.

I snatched the picture, immediately feeling my heart throb as I stared at her gorgeous depiction of us. I was riding my skateboard across a dirt road, her arms were wrapped around my neck and cheek was pressed into mine. My hands were wrapped around her legs to support her as I carried Aya on my back. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling like we had a secret.

I felt cold, realizing that maybe we did because this look an awful lot like the dreams I had during her slow decline into sickness; dreams I had only vaguely mentioned to Aya.

With shaking hands I dropped the picture, grabbing half a dozen more from the bed. The picture on the top of my pile. Aya and I were standing under a giant ceiba tree with what looked like a random arrangement of musicals scales carved into the trunk. Both of us had rainbow macaws perched on our shoulders, Aya was laughing as one nibbled a strand of her hair.

In the next picture, she was screaming as she gripped my clothes with all her strength as we skateboarded away from an explosion in the background. Our faces were smeared with dirt and ash, the buildings we passed bore red swastika or notes. Beneath that was a gigantic red-eyed bear, a terror that had often haunted my nightmares as a child. He had recently surfaced to try and gobbled Aya and I up in a dream, but I had only told her about the boars. This bear she had drawn was something she had pulled from within me. She had pulled everything from me.

My heart felt as though it was seizing. I rifled through the rest of the pictures, finding robot cops volcanoes, tidal waves, and everything else I had ever dreamed of saving her from. It was all here, the dreams I had hardly even whispered about inked into paper and the etched with notes and scales. It was as if she knew I would be standing here, looking through these pictures; as if they were all meant for me.

I touched the flash drive in my pocket, savoring the feeling of the single hot tear rolling down my cheek. It fell off my chin and hit the paper dangerously close to an A3 note hidden in the sea foam of a wave. For the first time since her funeral she was screaming my name, perhaps even louder than she ever had in real life and she just might be asking me to sing hers. The worst part of it was that I hated singing.

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 **A/N:** This was idea was sparked after reading Kaito's bio and I noticed he didn't like to sing. So I said hey,what if Aya pushed him out of his comfort zone after she died? Also, I applied a name to Aya's mother because I couldn't just use her, her, her. I would have lost my mind. I'm assuming she is Japanese. I do plan on continuing this one.


	2. Chapter 1: Chasing the Fox

**A/N:** So, eagerly anticipating the next LiH update which gave me the gusto to finish this chapter. :)

* * *

 **The Shadow of Stars**

 _Chapter 1: Chasing the Fox_

It hurt me to see her sitting next to me. She was tall and lovely by anyone's standards and had a smile so charming it made boys my age reciprocate. With hair the color of summer and the burgeoning figure of a young woman, she was exotic, but nothing I wanted. Furthermore, I hated that she occupied a seat I would forever consider taken.

Even now I can see Aya's frail body in that hard plastic chair. She used to sit straight as an arrow, but as the months passed she began hunching over on the desk, bowed by the weight of her sickened blood and bones. Most days she managed to look normal enough, but there were those when she her lower lip was pinched between her teeth as she reminded us all how terrible she was at lying.

I glance at the board, an equation I don't care to solve scrawled across the top. Our teacher is describing methods to solve for the variable and I still don't care. I close my eyes, running with the first memory that comes.

It was one of the days when she was chewing her lip. Her hair was barely brushed and her complexion sallow and pale. I'd spent all of first and second period watching her, waiting for the moment her final bough of strength would break and she would crash to the floor.

But she didn't. With a furrowed brow, she focused on the board and wrote her notes in hard lines. Glancing at the teacher, then back to Aya, I quickly wrote a note on the corner of my paper.

 _You okay?_

I waited until the teacher's back was turned before tossing it to Aya. She flashed me a sly, albeit weak, smile before opening the note. Quietly, Aya wrote something on the corner of her own paper, tore it off, then passed it to me. Opening it, I saw her clean handwriting.

 _Just a bad day. I'm okay._

She had gone back to actually paying attention, so I quietly wrote a response. I was about to pass it to her when I heard my name.

"Kaito," it was our teacher. "I know you're not about to pass a note, right?"

I swallowed. "No," I said. "Not at all." Using my feet to pull my backpack to me, I stuffed the note into a pocket and pulled out a Sharpie I didn't need and placed it on my desk. Our teacher was back on the equations. I looked back at Aya who was not only sitting a little straighter but now holding up her notebook, a single word scrawled across the entire page.

 _Oppression_

"Aya," Our teacher's voice was little unkind this time, truly defining what Aya had written. Slowly, Aya lowered her notebook and her eyes.

But I wasn't ready to be done. Aya had smiled; she had sat up. These were the things that mattered.

Quietly, I set my pencil down and picked up the Sharpie. Sliding the sleeve of my sweater back, I began writing vertically down my right arm. It didn't take long for Aya to catch me out of the corner of her eye. Satisfied, I propped my hand up on my chin so the words _No bad days_ were visible to her and it looked as though I was actually attentive. After I knew she had read it, I glanced at her, just because I was selfish and wanted to see her reaction.

Her eyes were big and happy, she was smiling so big it hurt me.

Quickly, I added, _Not on my watch._

Grinning, she pulled her own Sharpie out and rolled up her sleeve and began to write. She took a cursory glance at the teacher to make sure we were still under wraps before propping her arm up too. It read, _Are you going to chase them away?_

 _Nah,_ I wrote on the back of my hand. Then I turned my arm over and began writing on the inside. _More like outrun them._

 _Oh,_ she wrote back, _You think you're that fast?_

 _Yeah,_ I was running out of arm space. _We'll do it on my skateboard_

 _Together?_

I was in the middle of writing out, _I'll carry you_ when a manicured hand grabbed my right wrist and yanked hard enough to make it pop. I didn't have to look past the buttoned cuffs to know it was our teacher. Suddenly I felt very warm behind my ears. She looked at Aya, who was staring at her paper with pink cheeks.

Not that I've had many, but I still think that was the most worthy detention I've ever had.

I looked at the board again. Same teacher, same subject, same classroom. I didn't recall anything from this period not because I'd been writing notes on my arm but because I'd been remembering when Aya sat next to me and secretly hating the girl who now occupied her seat.

Aya...

Like an assault, I could suddenly see her the pictures layed out on the duvet. The adventures we had where cancer wasn't even a dim concern and her arms were the halo around my neck. It was becoming so visceral I could feel her hot breath on my cheek and suddenly there was so much pressure in my chest it burned. Biting my lip, my sleeve came up and I pressed the tip of the Sharpie into my skin.

 _Look at the stars, 10/10, camping._ Any word or phrase I could ever remember her saying made it on my arm, even a doodle of a bear. _Notification overload, pain, lost in..._ I looked at the wet ink as I chewed the cap of the pen, feeling the pressure on my chest lifting. What was that word she had written on her own arm that day?

On my wrist I penned, _oppressio_ _n_ _as neatly as I could_ _._

"Again?" I felt cold. Looking up, my teacher was standing with her hip out to the left, glaring at me from behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. Detention wasn't as fun without Aya.

* * *

"I don't understand." I sat on the floor of my room, Mom's words were still fresh on my mind. "I know you miss Aya, but why are you acting out?"

"I'm not acting out." I had protested. "It just kind of happened." Downstairs I could hear her clearing away the dinner that had been forgotten in our argument.

"Drawing on yourself in class just kind of happened? This is your second detention this year, Kaito." I didn't speak because she had plenty to say. I don't remember what it actually was because I just didn't care and I hate to say that, but she simply wasn't the girl I was thinking about. With guilt I predicted would compound, I slid my headphones on my ears and slipped the flash drive I had received from Miyoko into the USB port on my laptop.

I wasn't exactly sure what I expected to find, but I did hope it would be some kind of solace from that day. At worst, it would be something stupid I could reminisce about like photos or our class project from last year. At best, maybe, just _maybe_ she would have left me something meaningful, like a good bye.

But instead what popped up was a master folder labeled, "Our Adventure."

Squinting at the screen, I tried to remember if we had ever done anything that might hint to what this file was. We did lots of things that could be considered adventures.

I double clicked it and inside where thirteen sub-folders labeled accordingly. I went to the first and double clicked. Immediately I was prompted for a password.

I sighed, slouching a little. "Why, Aya."

Common variations were my first guesses. Her birthday, her dog's name, and anything else I could think of, but every time I was refused. With each attempt I felt the wick of anger my mother had lit growing hotter and hotter. Worse, I felt that burning anger towards Aya, as though she had designed this little exercise just to infuriate me after a humiliating day at school. It wasn't her fault, but right now she was an easy target.

Grabbing the lip of my laptop's screen, I shut it forcefully and left it on the floor. I crawled onto the bed with my day clothes still on and buried my face in the pillow. From my headphones, a remix of New World Symphony pounded like a bitter heartbeat.

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"Don't let the fox whisper."

The voice was as dark as the night around me. I couldn't see who was speaking but something told me to be afraid. Extending my hands, I brushed the strands of tall grass aside. Yellow-bottomed fireflies scattered like wishes into the forest canopy above. Something rustled to my left and I spun around, a cold sweat on the back of my neck.

"Don't let her speak." The voice came from behind me this time. I turned again only to see I was still alone. Now my heart was like a rabbit. A low rumble came from the grass. Appearing between the blades I could two eyes as golden as greed staring at me like a prize.

"Don't let—"

I didn't wait for whatever it was to finish. Turning on my heels, I ran, crashing through the grass and into the woods. Brambles and branches grabbed at me like sharp fingers, poking through my clothes and tearing my skin. Ripping them away with stinging tears in my eyes, I tried to keep my pace but the woods were growing thicker and thicker.

"H-Help—" The words were spoken between rasping breaths, but the forest seemed to listen, because suddenly the branches thinned. Still running, my foot in an uncovered root. With a yelp, I fell, landing on my hands and knees in shallow water.

Trembling, I stood. I had fallen in a perfectly round pond whose water was as clear as glass. The stones at the bottom glowed softly, emanating enough light to illuminate the water and cast shadows. Decorating the shore were bushes with bright white flowers in full bloom. Drinking from the edge of the pool was a petite fox, her fur a familiar and passionate red. Everything smelled of jasmine.

" _Kaito,_ " Light penetrated everything. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. When I opened them, my mother was standing by the window, very careful not to look at me as she spoke. "You're already late. Thank goodness you're dressed."

A little dazed from the dream, I looked down at my body, realizing I was still wearing yesterday's clothes. I realized should probably change and try to function. Instead, I slouched back into a ball on the bed.

"Out of bed," She said right before she grabbed my headphones from around my neck.

"Mom!" I reached for them but she was too quick. "Be careful with those!"

"You're telling me to be careful but you fall asleep wearing them? What's to stop you from rolling over in your sleep and breaking them?"

"You're missing the point, I—"

"And you're going to miss the bus." She snapped her fingers. "Go, they will be waiting for you on the table when you're ready."

I opened my mouth to say something but she raised one eyebrow and I knew better. With a sigh loud enough for her to hear, I rolled out of bed to get ready and she left. Still a little perturbed, I let myself remember the strange dream last night as I changed my shirt.

Violent forests, beautiful foxes, and dangerous shadow creatures. It sounded like something out of a manga. When I listened to music my dreams were anything but normal, the ones I had had of Aya were proof of that. And then I remembered her illustrations of our adventures. Our adventures.

I dropped the backpack I had been filling and grabbed the notebook Miyoko had given me. Opening it up, I began rifling through the pictures.

"Kaito?"

I bit my lip. "Yeah, Mom?" Not yet, please.

"You ready?"

"Almost!" A bear, a city scape, another bear... Wasn't there anything here with foxes?

I could hear her footsteps coming up the stairs. "Well, hurry you're going to make me late too."

A sunset, flocks of birds, a console box, "O-Okay, I—" Finally, a fox and a clear blue lake. I snatched it and stuffed it into my backpack before running to leave.

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 **A/N:** Lots of new ideas introduced in this chapter, I know. Bear (wow I'm hilarious) with me, neh?


End file.
